Can we save Mumbai from slums

The Government in Maharashtra has done what was expected due to the forthcoming State Assembly Elections – it has extended the cut off date for slums from 1995 to 2000 and to hell with the Court Orders! Political expediency always prevails – long term solutions are way beyond the mental capacity of our leaders/dealers. By extending the cut off, we are now going to give free housing to an estimated 250000 people – at what and whose cost? Does the city have the infrastructure to support its existing population? Today we are facing a 20% water cut due to the delay in the monsoons, roads are no longer roads but a series of potholes, garbage disposal is more a headache, construction debris is dumped on the only green cover left in the city, the marshlands – with the builder-police-politician nexus turning a blind eye. So where are we heading? Why do our politicians not look for solutions which are obvious? The only reason is lucre – filthy lucre with which our so called leaders have been blinded – self aggrandizement is all that they can do! So what can we do to try and resolve the Slumbai tag for Mumbai!

Abandon Mumbai. Get out of there. It is not livable anymore. The geography of Mumbai does not allow any further expansion. Amendments to laws, more flyovers, slum demolitions, multiplexes, traffic restrictions - nothing can save Mumbai. It is a piddly little island surrounded by water with land so precious that the more you try to clean up its infrastructural problems, the demand would just as easily fill it up. There is no way you can provide affordable housing for the middle class in Mumbai - forget affordable housing for the slum-dwellers. The land is too precious for that. The average Mumbai citizen will stay in the suburbs, and travel to his office in town in the morning in the millions, and travel back in the evening by local trains and buses. Nothing can change that. Unless you take Mumbai out of Mumbai. Do to Mumbai what Noida and Gurgaon did to New Delhi. Satellite towns with facilities. Places where the offices and companies can shift to. There is no real reason why the government or any of the major private companies need to be in Mumbai city any more. The logistics of expanding Mumbai along the western line past Virar, on the central line past Thane and Kalyan and on the Harbour line, encompassing the ready and planned development of Navi Mumbai would be a lot easier than trying to solve the problems of Mumbai proper.

The only way out is to move out. Move the government out of Mumbai. Move the courts out of Mumbai. Embrace Kharghar, the upcoming city node in Navi Mumbai - supposed to be the second best designed city in India after Chandigarh. The Agricultural Produce Marketing Co-operative markets were moved out of Masjid Bunder years back, and the benefits it brought to the congestion there was huge. Stop giving people a reason to crowd closer and closer to Mumbai, and Mumbai's problems will be lessened.
Who has understood the benefits of moving out of Mumbai? Reliance, for one. Wipro. Tata Tele. Mumbai International Infotech Park. And more than a million people. What will happen to slum dwellers then? Right now, the slum dwellers are where they are because there is demand for them in the heart of Mumbai and in and around all the suburbs. The means for them to make a living are concentrated in Mumbai city. Spread it out. Do not allow any further constructions in Mumbai. Move government and all major institutions out. Spread them out beyond Panvel and Kalyan and Ambernath and Virar.

What would happen? The slum dwellers will move with the demand. Mumbai's population will move with their jobs and businesses. Land is relatively cheaper once you are out of Mumbai. Provide affordable and cheap housing in those places, and ensure that slums do not come up there - that is much easier than uprooting existing slums. For example, there are very few slums in Navi Mumbai. There are poor people there too, who work as our istriwallahs, bais and watchmen. But they have some kind of housing, and they are more or less legal. It is easier to ensure that there is no new land mafia than to try to rout the existing ones. The poor can't afford housing - but only in Mumbai. Once out of Mumbai, there are places for them to rent out, buy and live with proper planning and politicial initiative.

Face it. Mumbai will never be a Shanghai. It will not even be Mumbai. Leave Mumbai as the cultural and historical capital of Maharashtra. A place where we take our visiting guests to show them Hotel Taj, the Gateway of India, Victoria Terminus and Churchgate station. A place you visit to remember those days of pollution, traffic, slums and congestion. Let Mumbai out of its limits, let it breathe. So that millions of people - the middle classes and the slum-dwellers have a chance at something resembling a life.





Ref:BC Mathew article